Flying in the face of easy audience-pleasing, this year’s Place Prize final shifts between humour and rigour, the personal and the impersonal.

It makes for a bumpy ride around dance’s outer fringes – exactly how a contemporary dance prize night should feel.

Oddly though, the most accessible piece is also, in my view, the best. The simply titled Duet finds long-time collaborators Hanna Gillgren and Heidi Rustgaard, aka h2dance, using text and movement to dissect a tricky relationship.

A sharp piece of comedy couples counselling, done with wit and neat timing, it touched some raw nerves in the audience but did it with a smile on its face.

If they don’t pick up the ultimate £25,000 cheque, h2dance look a good bet for the nightly £1,000 audience prize.

They’ll be tussling for that with Dead Gig, a disarming solo riff on psychedelic rock nostalgia from Grateful Dead groupie Rick Nodine, which should really be called Confessions Of A Teenage Deadhead. It’s fun, but a touch niche to win.

The standout performer of the night was Martha Pasakopoulou, dancing previous finalist Eva Recacha’s The Wishing Well. It was a shouty tale of a troubled woman, disturbingly hummed to the tune of the Macarena, that never quite unlocked its emotional secrets.

The final contender, Riccardo Buscarini’s Athletes, created an alluring sci-fi chill with its trio of white bodystocking human/machine hybrids writhing like slow-mo space cadet sex machines.

It would make a great YouTube clip but is it a winner? All is revealed on April 27.